An interview with the three princes

In a broadcasting first, Prince Charles and his sons, Prince William and Price Harry, have sat down together for a TV interview, highlights of which will be aired on “Dateline NBC” Sunday, 7 p.m. and “Today” Monday.

The pre-recorded chat with British presenters Ant and Dec (a comedy duo whose real names are Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly), revealed a lighter side of the Prince of Wales and a comfortable interaction with his sons.

The interview is a highlight of “The Prince’s Trust 30^th Birthday,” a TV special on UK network ITV. Billed as “UK’s biggest birthday bash,” the special will include a live concert from the Tower of London and mark the 30^th anniversary of the charity Prince Charles founded to help Britain’s disadvantaged youth.

The interview included a walk through with the Windsors through the gardens at Highgrove, the family’s country residence.

Below is the unedited transcript:

ANT: Your Royal highness congratulation on thirty years of the Prince’s Trust

PRINCE CHARLES: Very kind, thank you very much.

ANT: Tell us how…..

PRINCE CHARLES: I can’t believe it’s thirty years, it’s rather worrying…and I’m still alive…

LAUGHS

ANT: Tell us about the different ways the Trust supports young people all over the UK.

FREE VIDEO The Prince's Trust The princes' first joint interview is part of the 30th anniversary celebration of “The Prince’s Trust, a charity Prince Charles founded to help Britain’s disadvantaged youth. Dateline NBC

PRINCE CHARLES: Well as I say over thirty years I mean trying  to find ways you know meeting the particular needs and challenges that people face and really trying to bring out people’s best talents and potential.  It’s like a lot of people you know talent has been buried and never been brought out.  Everybody has something I think and it’s just that business of giving them self confidence and self esteem and funnily enough when you do that it gives people enormous encouragement and motivation, suddenly they realise they can do things that they never thought they could and so many people face difficult situations and come from difficult backgrounds and you know they get into a shell and can’t communicate and I find some of the programmes we’ve started for people just helps to develop their  abilities you know and suddenly particularly people you know who’ve been offenders for instance again their lives can be completely transformed much to everybody’s  amazement.

ANT: It helps kick start their lives.

PRINCE CHARLES: So what I think it is is an investment in the future. And that has grown and grown now so 66,000 businesses we’ve started now in the last twenty something years which is quite encouraging really and some of them are doing really well.  There was one the other day who we started twenty years ago exactly in 1986 and they started with a thousand pounds in their grandmother’s attic…

ANT: Really?

CHARLES: And they’re now turning over thirty million pounds a year and they’ve got offices you  know in Los Angeles and New York and Britain and they are fantastic – it’s called Attic yes I’m very proud of that….

ANT & DEC: Yes you must be.

ANT: William and Harry do you feel as strongly as your father does about the Trust?

PRINCE WILLIAM: Yes definitely – we both dipped in a little bit with The Prince’s Trust and helped out where we can and visited a few projects and programmes and it would be nice in the future if we can both get involved in it and help out but he’s (POINTS TO CHARLES) is doing a pretty good job at the moment so there’s no room for the two spares.

DEC : Let him carry on?

PRINCE WILLIAM: Yes exactly…

ANT: Do you find on these trips that you can often get more nervous than the people that you’re visiting as members of the Royal…. ?

PRINCE CHARLES: We try not to be..

ANT: You try not to be?

PRINCE HARRY: What about those people yesterday…because you turn up and everyone’s sort of cold and it’s really hard to…

ANT: Because everybody’s quite nervous I presume….that you guys are turning up and..

PRINCE HARRY: But then you’re expected to ask the questions and make the conversation and then even more nervous they’re just sort of going mmn mmn mmn and you’ll be lucky to get a yes or a no but then eventually just as everybody’s starts to relax and you get into a conversation then you have to leave.

PRINCE CHARLES: But the fun would then be to come back you see and  if you came back again I daresay it would be much better because they’d have got used to you but I mean a lot of it is involved at trying to put people at their ease because they obviously you know it’s the thinking about it and they have vague ideas that what you might be like or whatever so you have to try and encourage them it’s not quite as terrifying or awful or whatever as they thought and once you got over that perhaps you can then start to make a difference.

DEC: Now the media nowadays days tends to demonise young people with terms like hoodies and thugs and things like that I mean they’re all myths that the Trust has tried to dispell as well.

PRINCE CHARLES: Exactly.  I mean again it’s very easy isn’t it to create stereotypes which is what happens a lot unfortunately I think.  I just know that there are a lot of people who appear like that but underneath it all are actually uncertain and unsure of themselves and perhaps insecure and as I say all it needs a lot of the time is to provide them with motivation and self esteem and suddenly they are transformed.

DEC: They’re real life testimonies…they’re the best…

PRINCE CHARLES: I can jump up and down and shout and scream …..(LOOKS TO PRINCE WILLIAM)… thank you very much.

PRINCE WILLIAM: You’re welcome.

PRINCE CHARLES: …..but you know they make a real difference and the stories they tell you can’t believe the horrors some people have been through. 

DEC: I bet.

PRINCE CHARLES: You know abuse of every kind of horror but the fact that these have overcome it  and if we can help them overcome these real challenges and awfulnesses in

PRINCE CHARLES: I can jump up and down and shout and scream …..(LOOKS TO PRINCE WILLIAM)… thank you very much.

PRINCE WILLIAM: You’re welcome.

PRINCE CHARLES: …..but you know they make a real difference and the stories they tell you can’t believe the horrors some people have been through. 

DEC: I bet.

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